[thalestrader]

Originally Posted by enochbenjamin »

the farmer has fixed costs and will not sell his product for less than it cost to bring it to market.

That might fly in a freshman economics 101 course, but it won't last an hour on a working farm.

A farmer does have fixed costs.

A farmer will at times have no choice but to sell below cost, and all farmers would have the financial statements to prove it to be so. Recovering some capital is better than a loss of all capital.

Ask any farmer who hedges if he has ever hedged to lock in a loss so as to avoid a much larger loss rather than to lock in profits.

Corn may not go to zero, but it sure feels like it has at times. Ask any farmer, he'll tell you.

Best Wishes,

Thales

[BlowFish]

Originally Posted by enochbenjamin »

I have a book which I will dig up and post the title (even though its out of print) that basically instructs you to buy corn or any grain that is near a x time low. then double up every 50¢ it drops. You can't lose.

Fantastic! I'm all over that. Martingale for the win.

[theman]

Originally Posted by Dinerotrader »

Wow, my first experience with a limit day. I wish I had kept my shorts from yesterday.
I can't imagine the feeling of those stuck on the long side of todays move. I am very curious to see how the movement is tomorrow.

If youre using a smaller timeframe i.e. tick, range or vol chart, would you ever experience this limit day problem?

Also, can someone please explain this limit issue for dummies like me?

[BlueryBrors]

Hey!This is a cool forum and it's cool to have a local forum like this to talk.

[tjnoon]

My friend traded his forex account (sim) up to nearly $500,000. When I asked him how he did it, he just shrugged and said he never exited a trade at a loss. He just waited for the price to come back. "It always does," he said. A few weeks later I asked him how he was doing, and he said he quit. When I asked why, he said he just got bored. lol... Oh yeah, he finally let on that he blew up his sim account, too. "But that was just because he got tired of waiting for the price to come back.." I swear, this is a true story.

I think the grains are a great market to day trade. Thanks to Brownsfan for starting this thread. The initial points he made are still true. In my trade group, we like trading a 6 tick momentum range bar with wheat futures. We start a couple minutes after the market opens and we trade for just two winners and then we're done for the session. We also have a tight cutoff time, 11 am cst. In other words, we could trade for a few minutes on up to 90 minutes tops. It requires discipline and sometimes, due to the market's velocity, expert execution at times. This strategy has been very consistent and profitable if using responsible money mgt. Our system takes advantage of the price momentum with very concise setups, and measured trade profiles that are tuned to the current market condition at the time of the setup. We typically exit one position at a fixed target and the other, we trail with a very specific trailing stop technique. The dynamic stop reduces risk and seeks to get to a risk free position quickly and aggressively. Works great!

I particularly like Brownsfan's points about it being uncorrelated and that it heats up after we are often finished with our other earlier markets. It's great for the trader who has 'more trade in him' than his primary market might have in it, which might lead him to over trade and give back his hard earned gains. With a market like Wheat for example, you can approach it with a completely separate tradeplan, uninfluenced by the results of your earlier eMini trading. Gives strength in diversity when approached in such a way.

[iwshares]

Hi all I'm demo trading a soybean strategy at the moment (my experience so far is in trading forex). I am using an alpari UK demo account for this purpose. I sold ZS.Q1 at 1379 with SL at 1382.25 at 11:05 CET, 21/7/11. My 1382.25 SL triggered at 11:10, 21/7/11 despite price only reaching a high of 1379.5.

My question for the more experienced soybean traders is is this sort of fill very common? Is it massively worse/better with different dealers? As you can imagine I was a bit alarmed to lose 11 ticks more than I thought I should have. Any comments would be very much appreciated, thanks.

[enochbenjamin]

Originally Posted by iwshares »

Hi all I'm demo trading a soybean strategy at the moment (my experience so far is in trading forex). I am using an alpari UK demo account for this purpose. I sold ZS.Q1 at 1379 with SL at 1382.25 at 11:05 CET, 21/7/11. My 1382.25 SL triggered at 11:10, 21/7/11 despite price only reaching a high of 1379.5.

My question for the more experienced soybean traders is is this sort of fill very common? Is it massively worse/better with different dealers? As you can imagine I was a bit alarmed to lose 11 ticks more than I thought I should have. Any comments would be very much appreciated, thanks.

You need a futures broker to trade grains. That slippage is unacceptable and you will be broke very fast trading grains with that (almost 3 points) kind of slippage. Stop now before it's too late. The one thing you have to keep in mind with grains is that a news event will cause some significant gaps - so something like a flood being reported in the midwest can cause significant gaps.

Secondly, if this is your first foray into commodities after trading forex you sure picked a doozie! Corn is a little more liquid and moves a little slower - I would start there until you get a feel for grains as they are a very different beast from fx.

[phantom]

Originally Posted by iwshares »

Hi all I'm demo trading a soybean strategy at the moment (my experience so far is in trading forex). I am using an alpari UK demo account for this purpose. I sold ZS.Q1 at 1379 with SL at 1382.25 at 11:05 CET, 21/7/11. My 1382.25 SL triggered at 11:10, 21/7/11 despite price only reaching a high of 1379.5.

My question for the more experienced soybean traders is is this sort of fill very common? Is it massively worse/better with different dealers? As you can imagine I was a bit alarmed to lose 11 ticks more than I thought I should have. Any comments would be very much appreciated, thanks.

In my experience, demo account fills experience this nonsense all the time.

In a real account, I hardly ever get more than a quarter cent slippage while trading the ZS contract. My brokerage is a Chicago-based firm and I trade through the Ninja Trader platform.

Incidently, you should probably be trading the November contract at this point. The August contract is too thin.


Luv,
Phantom